The Gospel According to Nuala
by Lilithisbitter
Summary: A Plants in the City Sidestory. In a world of no tomorrows, for a Plant Angel time has no meaning. Oneshot.


Author's Notes: Nuala's story corresponds with the chapter of Plants in the City know as "Tessla".

The Gospel According to Nuala

A Plants in the City Sidestory

by Sailor Lilith-chan

In the beginning, there is light.

And it is good.

But before that is a warm feeling. Then they came and took the warmth away and exchanged it for another warm. Time doesn't really pass for her and to be honest time seems to be something she can ignore. Because she has all the time in the world in then some.

Sometimes a second matters and she holds onto it until it slips away and after it's gone, she wonders how it held up. But she's good at catching seconds. Sometimes she'd catch them all day and all night. The second beats and flutters against her chest. Its heart flutters and she plays with it in her bulb until she tires of it and rips its head off. Then she nibbles the second's tiny bones and thinks.

She named herself too. It's a name that stuck to her bulb so she read the name off the paper and ate the paper so the name would be hers forever and ever. It's Nuala and Nuala is she. She can't remember the name very well and she needs to eat another second to remember.

They raise her in a round place where the light shines and the warmth rushes over you where the sky shines like blue. Blue is pretty. Blue is the color of her mother-sister's eyes and the color of the sharp one's eyes too. She knows that he must be a sharp one so she calls him the sharp one. "Call me Millions Knives," he says when he comes in the evening, "Or if you want to be like the humans… Knives Millions."

"Okay, sharp one," she coos.

"Call me Knives," he repeats in a firm voice.

She giggles, hoping for a rewarded fusion of sugar or alcohol into her. Sugar is sweet, but alcohol is better. "If you give me Cognac," she begs, showing all of her fangs, "And call me by the name of Nuala, I shall call you Knives."

He tells her that she is still young and he admires that for it makes her beautiful. But if he's mad, he calls her stupid and no amount of cooing makes that right. But it must be good if he comes every night to see her wings bud from her body. They bud like flowers and grow long and wide. The wings on her back are small now… but they beat against her second pair of legs as she twitches in her world.

"Soon I will have cherubs," she says, pointing to her back, failing to notice that the sharp one has stopped smiling. "I want to them to be down to my toe-eses and up to my nose-eses. And I shall pet them and they will be my own."

"Don't ever change, Nuala," he says and disappears.

And then he's back again and again and again. Meaning Nuala has plenty of time to catch her second and hold it against her breasts and it eat it up.

In the beginning he comes with a woman who really isn't and she doesn't like the smell. But then he comes with the one who has sugar who calls you darling and everything. And his hair is blue. 

Blue is a very good color. 

More seconds pass and some she catches and eats. She compares their feathers to her own and licks them before swallowing them. Ugly pink things come by her world and stick stickies to her bulb. She muses over them as she licks her bulb clean and remembers her name for a time.

Nuala, Nuala, Nuala… no matter how many times she repeats it, she forget it. But it is her name and she ate it so it must be hers.

She muses over and eats her seconds as eternity passes and they take her out of her bulb and slide her into a box. She does not like the box. It is cramped and musty smelling. She wants out of the box and mewls as her nails scratch against the box. The beings on the other side blur as liquid fills the box and she screams then, bubbles escaping her mouth like all the seconds she could never catch and never would. Seconds fly by… horrible thing to let them go all to waste… they flutter, they chirp, they fly, they die. 

Her wings scrape angst the side of the tank, tiny irregularities in the surface catching her by flesh and feather alike making her bleed.

"Steady… idiot… move… break… calm."

The words come at her through her pointed ears as she chews and worries her lips with her long teeth. Wires and tubes are inserted. A calming feeling spreads throughout her body and they take her away.

They take her away from where it is blue. Then it is grey. The grey rolls and churns as she somehow moves to where it is green and brown and blue and… and…

There is a sister companion in a bulb near her. They do something to her and she changes colors and slumps to the bottom. Why? Why did she do that? Then they shift her into the bulb.

In the bulb, her sister-companion lies on the floor. She's pretty like that all black, white, scarlet, and all pretty pretty pretty… oh to be pretty pretty pretty like that. It would be grand to be like that. She's like a second and seconds are pretty like that.

"Shall I eat you up?" she coos to her sister-companion. 

Her sister-companion says nothing. Before the color-shift she had screeched and hurt her ears ever so much. "First, I shall eat your nose-es," she coos, tracing her fingers over her sister's papery face, "Then I shall gobble you up and keep you within me."

The sister-companion says nothing so she strokes her sister's hair. "We shall be one, sister-companion," she coos before lowering her face to her sister's own.

She bites and rips away. There's warm blood and flesh in her mouth as she chews and swallows.

She is Nuala. Nuala remembers… for now.

A small furry lump followed by another lands at her feet.

"Food… mine? Mine?"

She feeds.

The End 


End file.
